Client-side optics are facing an ever-increasing upgrading pace, driven by upcoming 5G related services and datacenter applications. The demand for a single lane data rate is soon approaching 200 Gbps. To meet such high-speed requirement, all segments of traditional intensity modulation direct detection (IM & x002F;DD) technologies are being challenged. The characteristics of electrical and optoelectronic components and the performance of modulation, coding, and digital signal processing (DSP) techniques are being stretched to their limits. In this context, we witnessed technological breakthroughs in several aspects, including development of broadband devices, novel modulation formats and coding, and high-performance DSP algorithms for the past few years. A great momentum has been accumulated to overcome the aforementioned challenges. In this article, we focus on IM & x002F;DD transmissions, and provide an overview of recent research and development efforts on key enabling technologies for 200 Gbps per lane and beyond. Our recent demonstrations of 200 Gbps short-reach transmissions with 4-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) and discrete multitone signals are also presented as examples to show the system requirements in terms of device characteristics and DSP performance. Apart from digital coherent technologies and advanced direct detection systems, such as Stokes-vector and Kramers-Kronig schemes, we expect high-speed IM & x002F;DD systems will remain advantageous in terms of system cost, power consumption, and footprint for short reach applications in the short- to mid- term perspective.

We report on an ON OFF keying intensity-modulation and direct-detection C-band optical transceiver capable of addressing all datacenter interconnect environments at well beyond 100 Gbaud. For this, the transmitter makes the use of two key InP technologies: a 2:1 double heterojunction bipolar transistor selector multiplexer and a monolithically integrated distributed feedback laser traveling-wave electro-absorption modulator, both exceeding 100-GHz of 3-dB analog bandwidth. A preamplified 110-Gaz PIN photodiode prior to a 100-CHs analog-to-digital converter complete the ultrahigh bandwidth transceiver module; the device under study. In the experimental work, which discriminates between intra- and inter-data center scenarios (dispersion unmanaged 120, 560, and 960 m; and dispersion-managed 10 and 80 km of standard single-mode fiber), we evaluate the bit-error rate evolution against the received optical power at 140, 180, and 204 Gbaud ON OFF keying for different equalization configurations (adaptive linear filter with and without the help of short-memory sequence estimation) and forward error correction schemes (hard-decision codes with 7% and 20% overhead); drawing conclusions from the observed system-level limitations of the respective environments at this ultrahigh baudrate, as well as from the operation margins and sensitivity metrics. From the demonstration, we highlight three results: successful operation with >6-dB sensitivity margin below the 7% error-correction at 140 Gbaud over the entire 100 m-80 km range with only linear feed-forward equalization. Then, the transmission of a 180-Gbaud ON OFF keying carrier over 80 km considering 20% error-correction overhead. Finally, a 10-km communication at 204 (Maud ON OFF keying with up to 6 dB sensitivity margin, and regular 7% overhead error-correction.

We demonstrate 56 Gbaud/λ PAM4 inter - data center interconnects over 81 km single core single mode fiber and 33.6 km 7-core single mode fiber with continuous-fiber Bragg grating based chromatic dispersion compensators covering C-band.

By employing enhanced DPCM, 15-Gbaud PAM4 digital mobile fronthaul is experimentally demonstrated to support 122 LTE-A channels with up to 4096QAM. Compared to PCM based CPRI, the supported number of channels increases 5 times and EVM is obviously improved.

We demonstrate an on-off keyed transmitter with direct detection, at record symbol rates of 204Gbaud and 140Gbaud, over 10km and 80km, respectively, powered by a high-speed InP-based 2: 1 selector and travelling-wave electro-absorption laser-modulator.

We demonstrate an on-offkeyed transmitter with direct detection, at record symbol rates of 204Gbaud and 140Gbaud, over 10km and 80km, respectively, powered by a high-speed InPbased 2:1 selector and travelling-wave electro-absorption laser-modulator.

We transmit 80 Gbaud/λ/core PAM4 signal enabled by 1.55 μm EML over 1 km 7-core fiber. The solution achieves single-wavelength and single-fiber 1.04 Tbit/s post-FEC transmission enhancing bandwidth-density for short-reach optical interconnects.

Kernel adaptive filtering (KAF) is proposed for nonlinearity-tolerant optical direct detection. for 7× 128 Gbit/s PAM4 transmission over 33.6km 7-core-fiber, KAF only needs 10 equalizer taps to reach KP4-FEC limit (BER@2.2e-4), whereas decision-feedback-equalizer needs 43 equalizer taps to reach HD-FEC limit (BER@3.8e-3).

A BiCMOS chip-based real-time IM/DD spatial division multiplexing system is experimentally demonstrated for short-reach communications. 100 Gbps/./core NRZ and EDB transmission is achieved below 7%-overhead HD-FEC limit after 10km 7-core fiber with optical dispersion compensation.

A BiCMOS chip-based real-time IM/DD spatial division multiplexing system is experimentally demonstrated for short-reach communications. 100 Gbps/λ/core NRZ and EDB transmission is achieved below 7%-overhead HD-FEC limit after 10km 7-core fiber with optical dispersion compensation.